Sixteen soldiers receive honorable burial at Omaha National Cemetery

Last week, the Omaha National Cemetery interred the remains of 16 World War II soldiers.

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On June 6, 1944, members of the Army’s 149th engineer Combat Battalion, 60th Medical Battalion and 50th Medical Collecting Company were ready to storm the beach in the forward hold of the LCI(L), Landing Craft, Infantry (Large) 92 as it approached the Normandy beach. The Coast Guard-manned ship was part of the 2nd wave. It steered to the port of the flaming LCI(L) 91 to use its smoke for cover. But when LCI(L) 92 came alongside, it hit a mine to its port side.

The men in the hold not killed immediately by the blast were covered with fuel oil and burned in the subsequent fire. According to a survivor of the craft, “A sheet of flame and steel shot out of the forward hold. The heat was like the midst of a blast furnace.”

Soon after the mine hit, an artillery shell hit the starboard side. The fire from the hold then attracted more German artillery.

After the remaining soldiers disembarked, the crew tried to fight the fires, but at 2 p.m. the skipper gave the order to abandon ship.

In subsequent days, the burned-out hulk would be pushed ashore and grounded by the tides. The blast and fire aboard LCI(L) 92 killed 25 soldiers, but due to the nature of the incident and the chaos of the invasion, only one soldier was immediately identified. The rest were collectively interred at the Normandy American Cemetery as unknowns, with their names listed on the Walls of the Missing.

In 2021, the Department of Defense’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred the 24 unidentified remains, identifying eight of them.

Last Thursday at Omaha National Cemetery, the remaining 16 were interred in a communal grave:

Pvt. Lawrence A. Beyer
Pvt. Warner C. Sutherland
Pvt. Harold F. Tullis
Pvt. Rex A. Gore
Pvt. Jack W. Green
Pvt. Orie Krieger
Pvt. Carl E. Vines
Pvt. Alex H. Raines
1st Sgt. Hiram H. Collins
Pfc. Manuel Pacheco
Pvt. Otis W. Dill
Pfc. Robert Pitts JR
Pfc. Robert N. Shotton
Pvt. Richard D. Waite
Pfc. Joseph F. Borysiewicz
Sgt. Theodore O. Gerth

You can leave a tribute to any of them, or 10 million other fallen Veterans, by searching VA’s online memorial, va.gov/remember.